In Blood & Plunder each nationality has certain distinctives that make it interesting and unique. In this post we look at the various Pirate factions in Blood & Plunder and what makes them unique and interesting as a whole.
This article takes into account everything from the core rule book, No Peace Beyond the Line, and Raise the Black Expansion books. If you haven’t yet purchased these Blood & Plunder books, you can find faction rules, commanders and unit profiles all on the Blood and Plunder Force Builder online.
The Raise the Black expansion book includes a whole chapter of Pirate factions for the early 18th century. While the Brethren of the Coast, Logwood Cutters, Pirates (17th Century factions from No Peace Beyond the Line expansion) and Last Buccaneers (An Unaligned Pirate Faction from Raise the Black) are technically classified as “Unaligned factions,”, we are lumping in them in here with the true pirates since they share a lot in common and they fit better here than with the “Minor Powers.”
The Pirate/Unaligned factions aren’t so much a “Nationality” as they are a group of factions that don’t have a nationality. They draw units from the other nations and have very few “unique” units to themselves.
What Makes the Pirate Factions Special?
Variety and Risk. While most factions get access to units primarily or exclusively in their own nationality, the Unaligned or “Pirate factions” get access to units from all the major nations! They can select the best units from each faction and put together a nasty ship full of reprobates. The Pirates of Nassau have only 2 units unique to their factions: The Pirates and Roundsmen units.
The Pirates also get to enjoy great number of options when it comes to Commanders. With all the household names of Blackbeard, Black Bart Roberts, Calico Jack Rackham, Bonny, Read, Hornigold, Morgan, and Sam Bellamy, the pirates are spoiled for choice when it comes to fun Commanders!
Most of the Pirate factions have a fun element of Risk when you put them on the table. Will my crew be focused and on the hunt for their next prize, disguised under their False Colors? Or dead Drunk and unable to shoot straight the entire game? Full of enthusiasm but lacking discipline, the Pirate faction will always be entertaining, even if a bit unpredictable.
The Pirate Factions
The various piratical Factions in Blood & Plunder include 3 from the 17th century and 6 from the early 18th century.
- Golden Age Pirates
- Flying Gang
- Blackbeard’s Men
- Caesar’s Men
- Pirates
- Brethren of the Coast
- Logwood Cutters
- Baymen
- The Last Buccaneers
Golden Age Pirates
The flagship faction of the Pirate Nationality is the Golden Age Pirates. This introduced a new, 3 point Pirate Unit armed with Brace of Pistols, with militia-style stats to represent the lack of marital ability these angry merchant sailors possessed. While they have access to all the national sailors as Core units, they posses no bonus to be the Attacker, and if they are the Defender must roll to see if they are subject to the Drunk Special Rule. However, if they do get to be the Attacker, they have the False Colors faction ability that will aid in closing the distance! This faction features most of the most famous pirates in mainstream media, with commanders like Stede Bonnet, Bart Roberts, Blackbeard and Charles Vane!
For those just getting into the game, this faction will probably be their first step into the Pirate Nation, as t offers many different ways to build a Pirate Force! If you like to hang back and blast away with cannons, the Sea Dogs and Zeeliden will keep those cannons running and aren’t bad in a scrap should you get boarded. If your playstyle centers around screaming into your opponent and taking their ship at the end of a blade and the crack of a pistol, the Marins and Pirates offer a good choice for Boarding! The only thing they are lacking are an abundance of solid musket units. While European Sailors offer a support unit with a 6 Shoot value and no negative rules (like the Warrior Musketeers Slow Reload), muskets for the pirates usually center around swapping out their pistols for buccaneer guns and using the sheer volume of models to overwhelm with muskets.
The Golden Age Pirates faction can be found in the Raise the Black expansion book.
The Flying Gang
The Flying Gang is a more British/English centered Pirate faction, and specialize in smaller ships. The good news is that they won’t ever have to roll for being drunk if they are the defender, and all their units gain the Ruthless Special Rule! Additionally, all thier ships gain the Shallow Draft Ship Trait for free and if they are the attacker, they may discard their hand and draw a new one without spending a Fortune Point! The only “drawback” to this flavor of pirates is that you are limited to size 2 ships only.
Being British/English flavored pirates, their Core Units consist of Sea Dogs, Jamaican Privateers (A new, 18th Century Sailor Musketeer!), and Pirates. While this limits the kind of force you can build, you still have the building blocks for a solid cannon list or boarding list (Ruthless turns Sea Dogs into close combat monsters!). The ship restriction may seem unfortunate, but loading up several longboats or piraguas with a bunch of Ruthless Pirates is still quite competitive and may throw some foes for a loop! The host of commanders is just as start studded as the Golden Age Pirates, with names like Benjamin Hornigold, Henry Jennings, Black Sam Bellamy, and Calico Jack!
The Flying Gang faction can be found in the Raise the Black expansion book.
BlackBeard’s Men
Blackbeard’s Men represents the personal force of the Legendary Pirate Commander Edward “Blackbeard” Teach. and its a heavy hitter! With a +2 to be the attacker, False Colors, and a free Discard (only if they are the attacker) its a pretty aggressive faction. Additionally, if you are able to bring the Queen Anne’s Revenge ship, you gain Vendetta against the opposing force! Blackbeard himself is no slouch either, with rules like Tough and Cold Blooded to make his force bloodthirsty while in melee or shooting muskets!
The faction’s only limitation is its core unit selection, while having access to nothing but Pirates and Roundsmen (a 6 point Elite Pirate unit) seems awesome, it means it is a force ill suited for running guns (and you need to bring 10 pairs on a 6th rate Frigate to make it the Queen Anne’s Revenge). However, you can easily ignore that option and just bring Blackbeard in whatever kind of ship you want!
The Blackbeard’s Men faction can be found in the Raise the Black expansion book.
Caesar’s Men
Based on the unsubstantiated Florida Legend of Black Caesar, the Caesar’s Men faction is a fun and powerful variation on the Golden Age Pirates faction but it can only be commanded by the Black Caesar commander. Of all the Pirate factions in the game, Caesar’s Men is the most aggressive; with a +4 to be the attacker, False Colors, Ruthless, and a free discard (if they are the attacker), this is a no-holds-barred faction. While he is limited to size 2 or smaller ships, this is the force you’d want to stack in canoes or piraguas anyway!
The Caesar’s Men faction can be found in the Raise the Black expansion book.
Brethren of the Coast
Moving back into the 17th century, the Brethren of the Coast faction is one of the largest and most interesting of the “pirate” factions. With access to a wide variety of English, French, Dutch, and even Spanish units, options for force-building are excellent in the Brethren of the Coast.
The Brethren of the Coast also have a huge variety of Commanders to choose from (including Legendary Commanders William Kidd and Henry Morgan) which further increases their options for force-building.
Unlike the 18the century pirates, these Buccaneers are skilled at musketry and are both brave and daring. You won’t find any cowards here in the Brethren of the Coast! They are skilled warriors both on land and sea.
Faction rules allow for free grapeshot or the ability to upgrade/downgrade the veterancy of a unit as well as the solid +2 for being the Attacker, and the ability to mulligan a hand of Activation Cards (if they are the Attacker).
The Brethren of the Coast faction can be found in the original & revised core Blood and Plunder rulebook and the No Peace Beyond the Line expansion book.
Logwood Cutters
The Logwood Cutters are the 17th century pirate land faction. They have lots of great musketry, but they are very exciting and swingy because you never know what condition your troops will start in!
If you’re the defender in a battle, you have to roll a single d10 and depending on what you roll, your force could behave (or misbehave) in several different ways! There’s a 30% chance you’ll be Determined which gives every unit a free action on the first turn which is really nice. There’s a 10% chance your force will be entirely unprepared and start the game with unloaded weapons. There’s a 40% chance some of your units will be drunk through the entire game. Being drunk doesn’t help your marksmen hit their targets… This makes this faction exciting and a little unpredictable and that can be a lot of fun. As long as you don’t roll the bad results too many games in a row! If you’re the attacker in a battle, you get the same basic Buccaneer/Brethren ability that lets you discard and redraw your hand of activation cards for free once during the game.
This faction is a good bit different than the Brethren and Pirates and while it doesn’t have as many unit options as the other Unaligned factions, I find that it’s easy to get hooked on using those cheap but accurate Engages. It’s not a reliable force due to the variable special rules but overall I think it’s a fun and good force in game play terms.
There is much less variety in options for Commanders when compared to the other Piratey factions.
Pirates
With a very generic faction name, the “Pirates” faction represents the more villainous 17th century pirates that had no loyalty at all, with Jean Hamlin being their headline Commander.
This faction has options for cheap grapeshot and the possibility of starting the game under their false colors, giving them a chance to control the first part of an engagement.
For units, this faction has easy access to all the major nations’ sailor/cannon crew units, the French and English Buccaneer sailor/soldier unit and then it can pick some of the more elite boarding party style crew from all the nations as support units. The Pirates are also one of the only 2 factions that can take the Pressed Men unit which has the dubious distinction of being possibly the worst unit in the game!
The Pirate faction has a few different options for generic unnamed commanders and one mid-level historical commander that you will have to try. He’s a mean one!
Depending on which units you emphasize in your Pirate force, it can be easy to expand into the French or English Buccaneer factions with the purchase of just a few more models. If you already have a French, English or Dutch seafaring force, it would be fairly easy to turn it into a Pirate force.
The Baymen
This is an 18th century update to the Logwood Cutters Faction. Featuring many of the same units and the same danger of being Drunk, this faction gives options for making the force more acclimated to land warfare, defending their camps from the Spanish raids.
The updated list reflects the gradual fading military experience and prowess, so they aren’t as deadly, but they’re easier to play with good options for cheaper units. Still very much a land faction.
The Last Buccaneers
The Last Buccaneers appear in the Unaligned section of Raise the Black, and represents the very last buccaneers in the Caribbean. This faction focuses primarily on older English and French Buccaneers and Spanish Corsairs still trying to be relevant at the dawn of the 18th Century. They have no bonus to be the attacker, get a free discard (they gain this as either the attacker or defender), and all their Trained and Veteran units gain the Hard Chargers special rule!
The Last Buccaneers’ core units are all solid, being able to bring Marineros, Marins, or Sea dogs as a sailors unit, and having access to the Jamaican Privateers and Later Filibuster (they are like Filibusters, but with worse resolve and only 1 of the their original special rules: Sailors). rounds out some musketeers. While they are a far cry from their 17th century counterparts, the Last Buccaneers prefer a more “direct” approach with blades and pistols in order to take advantage of their Hard Chargers rules! Their commanders are not as colorful, but Louis Guittar is of note because if you bring a Fluyt ship he gives it a speed boost!
Buying into Pirates and the Piratey Unaligned Factions
All the choices these factions give you make it a little difficult to decide what to buy if you’re putting together your first force. Since most of these factions are meant to be played at sea, the Two-Player Starter Box is a fantastic place to start! This box allows 2 people to split 24 sailors and 2 ships (or 1 greedy pirate to buy a box all for themselves!) and then have everything they need to start playing the game (except for glue and paint for your minis!). The models in this box are all multi-part plastic kits, making them very accessible and very easy to customize and personalize!
Along with the 2-Player Starter Box, Firelock Games released several Plastic box sets to build units out of! For the Pirates and Unaligned factions, the Sailors, Militia, and Pirates of Legend Box Sets are great places to start or add-on if you’ve already snagged the Starter Set. All these kits are meant to be generic so just about any Sailor or Sailor-Musketeer unit (they look best when Militia are combined with Sailor bits!) can be built out of them!
If assembling and gluing miniatures is not something you enjoy, Firelock Games has you covered! In Early 2024, they started updating their older metal models with a brand new 3D-printed Resin! These minis come pre-made and ready to go, just add primer and paint! The Unaligned Starter Box, when combined with the Pirates and Privateers Expansion Set (You can run the European Sailors, European Sailor Musketeers, and Sailor Weapon Upgrades as any of the other sailor models, just paint them up how you prefer!) will get you everything you need to play the Brethren of the Coast and Pirates factions from No Peace Beyond the Line!
On top of the boxes, every Resin unit is sold in 4-man Blister packs. So, if you already know how you want top build your list, there is nothing stopping you from snagging some blisters and painting them up! Another good use of the resin models is to add some variety to your sailors. Between the different poses and aesthetics, mixing some of the resin models in with some plastic sailors is a perfect expression of pirate culture and should be encouraged!
Final Thoughts
Blood & Plunder is more than just a Pirate game but it’s here in the Pirate factions that the game is as piratey as it gets! These factions have so many units and options available to them you’ll never get tired of playing them and their special rules for their factions are exciting and variable as well.
Of all the factions listed here, the Brethren of the Coast are the most competitive, as they have a ton of unit options that allow for all kinds of list building. The least competitive would be the Logwood Cutters, as being drunk has a chance of upending your entire list if you banked on shooting. However, for the casual gamer, all of the factions mentioned are good fun and can provide hours of entertainment!
If you like Pirates, like variety in your games and don’t mind some of that variability being out of your control, the Pirate and Unaligned Factions will be a great choice for you!
Check out the Ultimate Guide to Blood & Plunder Nations and Factions for more nation and factions reviews.